Netflix Fix -- Bad Lieutenant (1992)

When I was interviewing filmmaker Jody Hill (writer/director/producer of stuff such as Eastbound & Down and The Foot Fist Way) a few months back, he went on and on about his love of older cinema. We're talking flicks from 15 years back or more, the films that played by no rules and had no qualms bombarding the senses with images and characters that defied morals and decency. Stories didn't play their cards safely. Endings didn't have to be pleasant. Hollywood couldn't give two shits about good taste.

And all was right in the world of moviemaking.

Hill's sentiments mirrored mine quite closely, though I'm a few years younger than he is. Like him, I'm an addict of renting the films of yeateryears to play catch-up, mainly because I know that I'm in for something I've never seen before, or at least predecessors for things that modern-day films try to pass off as their own. The vow that Hill made was to inject unhealthy doses of this nihilistic approach into the comedy genre, and as evidenced by Eastbound & Down and the red band trailer for his upcoming Seth Rogen vehicle Observe & Report, he's remaining a man of his word thus far.

In our chat, Hill kept referencing Taxi Driver as a prime inspiration, but I'm willing to bet that Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant (1992) is right up there next to Travis Bickle's time under the New York City streetlights. Bad Lieutenant, starring Harvey Kietel at his most badass-est , an no-blinks character study of the nameless Lieutenant, a Queens police head who regularly snorts drugs, solicits prostitutes, poorly runs his dysfunctional family, gambles on Mets games, and engages in other random acts of bad behavior who (finally) begins questioning his world after a nun is viciously raped in the middle of a church.



Pretty much the worst lieutenant ever conceived, and exactly the kind of despicable, zero-saving-graces protagonist that somebody like Hill (I hate to keep dropping his name here, so bare with me....he just drives home the point of this post tightly for me), and myself, seems to gravitate toward for inexplicable reasons. It digs deeper than just pure entertainment value, or admiration for a steroid-strong acting performance. Characters like The Lieutenant never stop fascinating from Fade In to End Credits, mostly because they represent the type of person you'd never want to spend more than two minutes with in real life; yet, when seen through the disconnect of television screen, they're like magnets. Undeniable in their compelling nature, and effective messengers of life's fucked-up facets that go otherwise glossed over as "taboo."

Late into Bad Lieutenant, there's an emotional climax that would send religious activists and closed-off thinkers into panty-bunched hissies. It's such a great scene, because it demonstrates just how morally corrupt Keitel's character is even in his rare "sympathetic" moments. [Spoiler Warning] After some drug-induced soul-searching, he confronts the raped nun in her church as she's praying. He tells her that he's going to say "Fuck the law" and kill the deviants who raped her, for her. She, however, informs The Lieutenant that she's already forgiven the rapists, which sends The Lieutenant into a rattled, confused frenzy. Even when he thinks he's avenging his own sins and cleansing his soul through vengeful intentions, he's defying the higher power. It's a can't-beat-my-darkness pickle. Jesus himself approaches The Lieutenant once the nun exits, and all our our shattered man can do is call Jesus a "rat fuck" and question why he wasn't there for the nun in her time of protective-need.

Religion is treated as both a necessary form od redemption and a cause of constant grief. When was the last time you saw that kind of double-sided coin morality in a flick?



There's a modern-day extension of this great flick currently in the works, a New Orleans-set new installment for Bad Lieutenant starring Nicolas Cage. Now a believer in the power of Abel Ferrara's original, I can say without hesitation that a new spin with Cage in the driver's seat is a shitshow waiting to happen. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, since the venerable Werner Herzog is behind the camera, but there's just no way that 2009-era Nicolas Cage will even come within miles of Harvey Keitel's 1992 work. It's not even worth attempting, so go and make another National Treasure film, sir Cage.

My hope, and call me a pessimist all you want, is that Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans sucks as much as I'm anticipating. Because if it doesn't, my head might pull a Scanners due to "Have I been wrong all this time?" self-analysis. I'm convinced that skeevy, thoughtful, uncompromising character descents such as Bad Lieutenant can't be duplicated or even approached-by-a-long-ways today. And as long as that remains the truth, I'll forever have older gems to seek out and ponder.

Unwrapping stuff like this flick never loses its luster. Up next in this particular conquest will be early Robert Deniro's The Panic in Needle Park, and I'm sure I'll more than enjoy. Until then....

This scene is certified NSFBE (Not Safe For Baby Eyes):


And that's one of the "kinder" things he does.